Sydney share bike plague creates eyesores across city

HANGING from trees, caked in mud on the banks of rivers around the city, stranded in sand at Bondi Beach and sprawled across footpaths everywhere — the great share-bike plague is spreading across Sydney.

A cyclist pedals an ofo bike in Pyrmont yesterday. Picture: Justin Lloyd

THE great bike plague is spreading across Sydney — they are hanging from trees, caked in mud on the banks of rivers around the city, stranded in the sand at Bondi Beach and sprawled across suburban footpaths everywhere.

An estimated 10,000 “dockless” bikes have flooded the streets, with at least six companies vying to capture the market — and the unwanted eyesores have even rolled as far afield as the Blue Mountains, Windsor and Newcastle.

The idea is anyone with a smartphone can pay a minimal fee, around $2 an hour, and hop on one of the bikes to go anywhere they want.

This tangle of bikes at Coogee earned the ire of an Instagram user who wrote: “Can you please not throw your bikes into the ocean!”

The problem is people can also dump them anywhere they want as there are no docking stations.

But now Sydney has had enough. With the community up in arms, a group of fed-up mayors, and even some of the bike companies, are calling on the state government to step in and “show some leadership”.

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Foreign operators have flooded the market with cheap bikes that are being vandalised and becoming a hazard. Companies do not have to have permits and the state and local governments are continually passing the buck over who should crack down on cowboy operators.

Discarded bikes render a pavement impassasble near the Harbour Bridge at The Rocks.

Share bikes neatly stacked in Broome St, Waterloo. Picture: John Grainger

Turfed aside for walkers to trip over. Picture: Richard Dobson

While the Berejiklian government says local governments have enough powers to impound the bikes, the mayors insist it would cost them a fortune to dispose of them and regulations need to be put in place to cover all council areas.

Transport Minister Andrew Constance said yesterday he would call on councils to “consider providing the space on their footpaths to create docking stations where these bikes can be left without impacting the safety of pedestrians and urban amenity”.

“It’s about time councils started acting on the powers they already have, and work with us on creating a solution,” Mr Constance said.

This cluster has grown on the sands of Bronte Beach.

Another eyesore at Edgecliff.

But Inner West Council Mayor Darcy Byrne said the state government had to get involved in solving the “serious problem”.

“I know Transport Minister Andrew Constance is not very good at trains or ferries but I thought he might have stepped up to the plate on bikes,” Mr Byrne said.

Waverley Mayor John Wakefield — whose council includes Bondi Beach, which seems to act as “magnet” for bike litterers — has also called on the state government to stop shirking its responsibilities.

It is a national problem. In Melbourne authorities have begun crushing the cycles while in Adelaide the city council has issued permits to try to regulate the industry.

In Sydney, not only are the bikes an eyesore, vandals are also stealing helmets, wheels and cutting brake wires.

The problem is massive in China.

“The novelty of building a sculpture out of bikes has worn off, you’re not going to get the social media coverage you might have when they first came out,” Kate Toohey, from the Southern Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, said.

“The bigger concern is people who are maliciously damaging brake cables and cutting seats and actually putting the safety of users at risk.”

Professor Joellen Riley, Dean at the University of Sydney Law School, said the business model of the bike companies relied on sharing “community property” — our streets.

“They are not being shared, they are being rented — in a public space,” Prof Riley said. “Why aren’t they being charged for littering?

“One of the problems of the sharing economy models is they are not factoring in the resources they are appropriating from the community, without paying for it or without even seeking permission.

“There’s another price on the rest of the community — the inconvenience of having poorly designed bikes, some with no gears — holding up traffic.”

Inner West Council is leading a group of six councils who have banded together to enforce strict conditions on operators.

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Mr Byrne said it was key to have specific locations to which the bikes are returned.

Lorisa Habib, 23, said she had ridden the bikes before but found some were so damaged they couldn’t be used.

“They really need to look into having racks for them, they are just strewn everywhere,” she said.

The biggest operator, Beijing-based Mobike, was the last of the companies to start operations in Sydney, in November last year.

“Mobike share the concerns of the community and want to work with the state government to address these issues,” a spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for ofo bikes, also founded in Beijing, said it has a team dealing with faulty and misplaced bikes, while Reddy Go, which started in July last year, said it employed 30 people to scour the streets and check on the conditions of its cycles.